Mark Goodacre

This article appeared in The Evangelical Quarterly 67
(1997), pp. 3-6. It is reproduced here with permission .

When I went up to Exeter College, Oxford to read Theology in
1985, one of the most daunting tasks seemed to be the requirement
to learn Greek in matter of weeks. One arrives in October and
takes the Preliminary Examination the following March, by which
time one is expected to have mastered the language and to be able
to translate and comment on Mark 1-6 with confidence.

I had done Latin at school and struggled with it. Greek looked
even more forbidding: at least Latin had a normal looking
alphabet. And I had had two years to tackle the Latin - and then
only up to 'O' Level standard. How could I possibly manage to
master Greek in such a short time?

I confided such anxieties to a third year studying Theology at
the same college. 'Not to worry,' he said, 'there's "Wenham" to
help you through'. He took a faded, pale blue, distinctly
unmenacing looking paperback book from his shelf, The Elements
of New Testament Greek by J. W. Wenham,(1)
and during the weeks
that followed I enjoyed steadily working my way through the book,
coming to terms with the language with few of the problems I had
feared at the start.

The book that has become known as 'Wenham' is a gem. It has,
over the years since its first publication in 1965, rightly
earned its place as by far the best introduction to Greek for
those intending to study the New Testament. Among its many,
great virtues is that it begins with an introduction to English
Grammar to which the later chapters refer the needy reader, ideal
for a generation that goes through school without clear knowledge
of much basic grammar.

The book has plenty of exercises - more than one needs in fact -
and they concentrate, from very early on, on translation. From
the first, therefore, the student is encouraged to think about
the language, and not merely to parse and reconstruct words in
mechanical fashion. When the student begins to translate
passages from the New Testament, the act of translation is not a
new and threatening thing: it is rather something into which one
has been steadily and gently trained, from one word at a time, to
short sentences, to longer sentences and ultimately to full
sentences incorporating participles and the rest.

As the student does his or her exercises, the vocabulary steadily
builds. Each chapter gives a list of words to learn but even
here, it need not be by rote. With each word goes a mnemonic.
ballw (ballo) means 'I throw'
and alongside this is given 'ballistic' as an aid to memory.
Likewise, esqiw (esthio) means
'I eat' and alongside we are given 'comestibles'.

As one progresses through these vocabularies, there are periodic
notes on how many words one knows. The first of these occurs
after Lesson Eight when we are told that we are now familiar with
one-third of the 137,500 words in the New Testament. Only five
lessons later, we find that we know 'more than half the words in
the New Testament'.

It is matters like this that make the book popular. It is not an
easy thing to incorporate encouragement into a grammar, usually
the job of the teacher not the text book. By this and other
means, though, 'Wenham' draws the reader on. 'It may cheer those
who are starting on the course,' he says, 'to know how
little there is to learn' (p. xi).

This is exactly right. What Wenham has done is to provide, as
the title promises, the elements of the language. It is
what the student needs to know and there is much useful
simplification. I have found it useful in teaching New Testament
Greek to tell the students that all they need to know about the
formation of nouns is contained on just one page of 'Wenham' (p.
229) which they might photocopy and put next to the mirror at
home.

Further, the simplification often results in clarification of
important issues. One might take the question of accents, for
example. Wenham dispenses with almost all accents, and the
resulting naked looking text has been enough to shock some
traditional, classically trained minds into preferring a more
conservative, complicated grammar. This kind of reaction is a
shame, however, since, in my experience, the dispensing with
accents has several positive knock-on effects: it encourages the
proper use of breathings from early on; it helps students to spot
iota subscripts; and it enables them to get used to the few
instances where accents are genuinely helpful, as with the
difference between tiV (tis)
with an accent and tiV (tis)
without an accent or ei (ei)
with a circumflex and ei (ei)
without a circumflex.

Such strengths proceed, no doubt, from the author's experience of
teaching New Testament Greek. The book is based on the earlier
one of the same name by H. P. V. Nunn, a book which John Wenham
had utilised for years in teaching. The changes made are those
which benefit the student, simplifying, clarifying and
concentrating on the basics.

'Wenham' is not perfect, though. Each teacher will have his or
her own qualms. Some will feel that the aorist tense is
introduced too late on. Others will be concerned about the hasty
way in which participles are introduced, on mass, all in one
chapter, again quite late on. Others still will be unhappy about
how little information is given about the 'meaning' of the middle
voice.

Another common criticism concerns the content of some of the
sentences, which, it is said, can verge on anti-Semitism and
sexism. This criticism is, at best, only partly justified. It
is true that the Pharisees come off pretty badly and,
furthermore, the sentences are all heavily patriarchal, but it
should be said in defence of Wenham that this is largely because
he is apparently attempting to recreate the attitude of the New
Testament writers. Moreover, it is not true, as is sometimes
claimed, that one can find sentences like 'God hates the Jews'.

Yet it is a mark of the greatness of the book that legends about
the sentences are in circulation. Contrary to popular belief,
one does not actually find 'The prophets stone the virgins' (or
vice versa). One does, however, find some quaint, almost
charming sentences: 'Beautiful daughters will become like their
mothers'; 'And that man marries the happy virgin'.

What then of the author himself? After I had completed my
Theology degree I began post-graduate work in Oxford on the New
Testament and this involved a fortnightly Graduate Seminar,
attended by several of the fellows and many of the students
engaged in New Testament research. An elderly gentleman in a
crumpled brown coat was usually present at these sessions and I
was excited to discover, after some time, that this was the great
John Wenham himself.

He was a man of uncommon humility. On one occasion Prof. Ed
Sanders was giving a paper on Matthew 5 and the discussion was
revolving around the translation of the repeated formula egw de legw (ego de lego), 'But I say
to you . . .'. Everyone eagerly turned to John for illumination
but he quietly, almost inaudibly, replied, 'I am not an expert in
these matters'.

It was difficult to draw John Wenham on Greek. He tended to play
down the success of his most famous book and was rather reluctant
to talk about it. He would far rather engage in discussion of
one of his several conservative evangelical books or, indeed, on
any aspect of his Christian faith.

Yet this is another clue to the book's success. Its strength is
that it knows its limitations. It is written not by an expert
but by a talented and dedicated amateur with a keen grasp of what
it is like to be a student tackling a difficult subject for the
first time. The Elements of New Testament Greek is not an
advanced grammar; it is not the book one turns to for help in
unravelling difficulties when translating the text at a later
stage. But by the end of 'Wenham', the student has grasped the
basics and is confident about translation. The barrier has been
broken and the elements have been mastered. With Wenham's help,
many students have taken the first step to serious study of the
New Testament with surprising ease. It is a wonderful
achievement, a real triumph for which many will remain deeply
grateful.

Note 1: J. W. Wenham, The Elements of
New Testament Greek (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1965). This article is written as a tribute to the book and as a
token of affection for the memory of a man who will be greatly
missed by many. (Back)